At long last, the time has come to roll Yoshi in FFXIV and tell her story!

This is my first Let’s Play with audio commentary, and while I certainly expect some early installment weirdness while I remember how to chop up video, I hope you will find this “toeing the line between walkthrough and light RP” to be at least somewhat amusing. I mean, I even peppered memes! Mmmm, dank memes.

The Yoshi that’s in XIV is an Ishgardian-born Wildwood Elezen who had her childhood aspirations of being the first Ishgardian Black Mage pooh-poohed by the highborn as being “improper occupation.” What does one do when you’re told “no you can’t?” You counter with “just you watch!” I’m currently recorded up to halfway through Heavensward’s leveling stuff, and slowly getting things chopped up and packaged for upload to the YouTubes. Fun times!

In other, unrelated news… I’ve had a hell of a time trying to figure out why this WordPress installation keeps getting hijacked. It’s happened, like, 3 times now and despite doing a force reinstall it’s just… ugh. The first time was right after Kestine died as well, and Hostrocket was nagging me to fix it, so that was fun. :S

]]>Mood whiplash is FUN!http://layer-infinity.net/2017/11/08/mood-whiplash-is-fun
Wed, 08 Nov 2017 07:16:12 +0000http://layer-infinity.net/?p=1762I should, like, make more of an effort to write in here again. I’ve gotten far too lazy in just barfing my thoughts solely on Twitter, and the temptation to do so has gotten only stronger because of the upgrade to 280 characters.

It’s only Tuesday and this week has already been several kinds of WTF. I knew things would be odd because 3 doctor appointments in one week, but… damn.

Monday: I had to go see my main doctor as a condition of getting my med renewal charges restocked. The doctor is a tiny old Filipino man who doesn’t really talk much (picture someone like the nameless homeroom teacher from Evangelion) but today he was unusually chatty, asking about my BiPAP machine since he has the previous model. Like, REALLY getting into it. Internally I’m like “wait, he actually talks?! Holy crap!”

As an old habit from WAY back when I was in Kaiser, I assumed the doctor would want blood work and did the fasting thing (me being a fatty mcfatderp, it’s probably a periodic check to make sure I didn’t get whacked by the diabetes stick… or maybe because of thyroid stuff. Probably both). And I was right to. BUT, because the doctor had a new, fussy and time-consuming patient ahead of me, there was a long wait for him to actually get to me. That’s not a problem, the fact that LabCorp would be closed before I could get there was. Sooo… I fasted for nothing. Fun times!

(WHY MUST YOU CLOSE SO EARLY, LABCORP? It’s not even a 9 to 5 thing! It’s 9 to 4! An hour makes a huge difference for slowpokes like me!!)

My mother got takeout on the way back, both because a pointless fast is awful and also she hadn’t eaten yet so we were both super-hungry. So the day was salvaged, I guess.

Tuesday: I had to redo the fast, and got up earlier to go do the blood work before lunch hour. More takeout, too! Unusual circumstances, so it’s okay– there wouldn’t have been enough time to go home and make lunch because…

Another doctor visit, only this time I get to hoof it to Eastvale since that’s where Pacific Eye Institute is. (For being such a fancy, lavishly-decorated facility, it gets a ton of Medicaid patients. Huh. The name and appearance implies it would be for rich people.) My old opthalmologist retired, so I got bounced to… basically the next one available, who I saw last week, and he was all “oh I should bounce you to our new keratoconus specialist” and boop, I am asked to return today to see said new person. As awkward as that scenario sounds, it was actually for the best. Why?

New eye doctor, for one, is basically Kal Penn if he had a SLIGHTLY wider head and thick-framed coke bottle glasses. Yay! Also yay: he’s actually getting the ball rolling on my corneal transplant, which has ONLY been in limbo for the past two years since old eye doctor (who was basically William H. Macy but taller and with lighter hair) was super waffly and fat-shamy– like, he was convinced that my keratoconus was a result of my being fat and he thought he could blow off doing the corneal transplant by throwing glaucoma eyedrops at me. It’s not glaucoma, jackass. Your tech flunkies said so.

New eye doctor WOULD have set up the transplant fairly soon, except being new has a few administrative complications. Like most new employees, there’s a bit of a probation period– in his case, it’s a waiting period while he’s authorized to perform surgery at the hospital he was hired at. He doesn’t seem to be bothered much by me being a “patient of size” so I don’t expect much finger-waggling there.

I’m prescribed a second set of eye drops to stack on the brimonidine, only these drops aren’t being used in the “let’s just act like we’re dealing with glaucoma” context, this prednisolone is more of a “let’s try to fix even a little bit of the scarring in the meantime until we can book you for surgery” thing, so at least there’s considerably less bullshit to deal with.

It seems like a really good day so far! I get home and lie down a bit before raid night in WoW. Yeee, we’re gonna finally punch Heroic Kil’jaeden and I’ll still get my pizza later because Tuesday is pizza day! A few minutes before we’re set to begin, I get up to go to Blastoise, but Daisy was on my desk. I didn’t notice her, and she wasn’t aware of me approaching since I wasn’t wearing my slippers, so she got startled and toppled my almost-empty water pitcher that I had moved to my PC desk to make room for sorting my medicine that morning and… uhhh…

It wasn’t a lot of water, but juuuust enough to get into my keyboard and mouse. Aw hell. Welp, I figured both were totally wrecked and I’d have to withdraw from the raid until whenever I could secure replacements. My mood just tanked SUPER hard.

I went back to lounging in bed and– oh, the guild got Ahead of the Curve and WELP THERE GOES MY CHANCE TO GET A KILL VIDEO WITH NERDSCREAMS, FFFFFFF– a few hours later came back to Blastoise to confirm that my stuff was still dead.

It wasn’t. Both the keyboard and mouse recovered.

WHAT.

I’ve never had a good track record with any kind of water damage, however rare it was. I’d lost a nice keyboard and my old Macbook to water damage and I was sure my current keyboard and Naga Chroma were done for… except they survived. Somehow. I should just shut up and be grateful that they aren’t hosed, right?

Now I’m just in this weird… mood whiplash headspace. I was prepared to be just miserable for potentially the rest of the week, and while I appreciate my guild offers to replace my stuff I don’t think I could deal with the shame of having to sponge my way back, not without treating it as a commission and throwing art at them in return. (And it would have been WAY worse if Robert did it. Which is really out of character for him. Bro out-pennypinches Scrooge McDuck, he’s the last person I would expect to volunteer to replace my keyboard and such.) Ahh, residual disability-related guilt sure is fun, isn’t it?

Hello friends! Since you’re reading this, it means I was successful in scrounging up coins, and even had some left over! Ayarane Project is thus secured for the next 3 years. Hooray!

Of course, I should always be soliciting more commissions because SSI is still chump change and commissions are still the safest way of padding my tiny-ass bank account without Social Security getting pissy. Holidays are coming up, and commissions make nice gifts! Speaking of gifts, you can go to the top corporate gifts company which is a search portal. You can search all things that you can buy depending on your budget.

Not just Social Security but also homeland and business security, is very important. Keeping family members safe and secure is the prime responsibility of the head of the household. One important home security system that can help in ensuring the safety of the household is a video surveillance system from SecurityInfo.com.

I’m retiring the google form since in hindsight it’s way too wordy and most of my requests come in over Twitter and Facebook anyway. See the above image for new details! Of note: I’ve lifted the restrictions on fan art and NSFW content, though the latter comes with a $25 surcharge. This is because I have nearly no privacy and I have to wait until people go to bed or are otherwise not in viewing range of my iPad to avoid awkward conversations. (It’s not like there are outright objections to me drawing nudes, I just don’t need to hear my mother repeatedly dredging up the story about how my uncle took figure studies just to indulge in drawing naked women. Old story is old.)

I am once again in need of some monetary assistance. My host contract for the Ayarane Project server (this very website) is up for renewal at the end of October (the 27th, to be specific). It’s up for renewal every 3 years, which works out to a very reasonable deal @ $5 a month, paid up front for $180.

It was a reasonable amount to deal with at the time I purchased the hosting (late 2008) but disability and the sharply reduced income that comes with it makes renewing a LITTLE painful. I have and will continue doing what I can to save up to pay for it, but since I lose 80% of my monthly SSI payments to household bills and much of the leftover is eaten up by my personal expenses (Tracfone and MMO subs) I don’t have much wiggle room.

I’ve had the domain+server since 2001 and I would really, REALLY hate to lose everything I’ve accomplished on my website over the years, even though I see more use of Twitter/Facebook these days. Please indulge this derplord’s wish to preserve a huge chunk of my online identity.

Commissions are the usual go-to but I realize that at $50 it’s not the most affordable, so I’ve made a Ko-fi account as a more accessable option. I also plan to do some kind of streaming to hopefully solicit additional donations! Please vote in this Strawpoll for what you would like to see me stream. I’ll PROBABLY pick the top two, though I reserve the right to substitute at my discretion if things glitch out.

(To preemptively address a recurring question: Patreon is NOT an option as is anything that requires filling out a 1040 form, since it is considered “recurring income” and would surely attract unwanted attention from Social Security. Single-instance things like commissions, Ko-fi and direct paypal transfers are “grey area” and unlikely to get my SSI benefits torpedoed.)

If you’re not able to donate, no worries– you can still help by sharing this post/future stream notifications and referring your friends who are in search of a commission artist.